Traditionally, a parts salesperson must carry with him or her all of the sales tools related to the particular kinds of parts that they wish to sell. These tools include parts catalogs, sample parts, and parts order forms. To carry the combination of all of these sales tools can be very cumbersome for a salesperson. For a salesperson to bring all of these sales tools into a customer visit could be quite difficult. In particular, if a parts salesperson must bring in parts catalogs for several types of parts as well as several different manufacturers of parts, and in addition the corresponding samples of each type of part by each of the manufacturers, the salesperson may find this overwhelming and choose to limit the number of parts that they sell or the particular manufacturers that they sell for.
Further, looking up a part number in a catalog can take significant amounts of time. In addition, trying to match a particular part with a particular need can be very difficult. For instance, trying to find a particular filter which will fit on a particular product may be impossible to accomplish in a limited amount of time. It can be even more difficult to determine all parts that a user with many types and brands of equipment may require. Further, the generation of a corresponding proposal or order, particularly a personalized one, has been difficult. An additional long felt need has been the need to educate sales people with respect to a particular product line of a manufacturer as well as the features and benefits of those particular products in comparison to other comparable products in a relatively quick and efficient manner.
The preferred system seeks to overcome these problems by linking these and other functions into a single system.